Police Non Urgent 101
but that's for when we want to talk to the police, not when they have a message for us.
The something else PC Bailey said was the the Met are looking to collect email addresses for people living in an area so that they could receive warnings such as my neighbour forwarded to me, and that a London wide target had been set for email addresses to collect. In her email, my neighbour said it was "a type of neighbourhood watch for Perry Vale", and that if I wanted to get such emails direct, "perhaps you could contact him and also pass message onto any neighbours who might be interested".
I can see the point, but I wonder about this. PC Bailey assured us that emails would always use bcc, but even the best of us make mistakes. I felt like asking whether there was anything to do with their email systems which would make this impossible, but I thought better of it. I also wondered about the security of whatever databases they held this information on - could they be hacked by someone wanting to get a list of emails for people living in a given area? Might a less scrupulous officer ever consider selling such information? I also wondered about the structure of the database - were the email addresses linked to a specific address, or just a ward?
This morning I've done some googling on this, searching for terms such as 'Met London Neighbourhood Watch email", but not found any reference to the scheme, or numerical targets PC Bailey mentioned, so I'll email him about it.
In case anyone wonders, I think the basic idea here is good; there have to be effective ways for the Police to get these sorts of messages out which involve modern electronic media, but my strong suspicion is that this particular scheme has not been thought through. I suspect also that it would need to be managed independently, given the unfortunate level of distrust in the Met, arising not so much from malign intent, such as framing the innocent, from the humblest to Andrew Mitchell, but more because mistakes and sloppiness will happen, and the wider public will take a lot of convincing to trust their systems.
I will be asking PC Bailey to add me to his email list as my neighbour suggests, because I think it will do some good, but there will be better ways for state agencies such as the police to work together to target public information messages. However, getting the security of the such systems right will be a massive challenge.
